More Propaganda: Fake Leaflets Telling Jews to Register or be Deported

The leaflets making international news yesterday for claiming that the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Ukraine were requiring Jews to register with the new “People’s Republic of Donetsk” or be deported are now largely accepted as having been fake.

Earlier this week, Jews exiting a synagogue were handed leaflets by men wearing balaclavas and Russian flags informing them that they were required to register themselves and a list of their property as well as pay a registration fee or they would face deportation, have their citizenship revoked, or have their belongings confiscated.

The leaflet begins “Dear Ukraine citizens of Jewish nationality” and states that all people of Jewish descent over 16 years old must report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and “register.”

It says the reason is because the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendery Junta, a reference to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement that fought for Ukrainian independence at the end of World War II, “and oppose the pro-Slavic People’s Republic of Donetsk,” a name adopted by the militant leadership.

The leaflet then described which documents Jews should provide: “ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion, religious documents of family members, as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you, including vehicles.”

Consequences for non-compliance will result in citizenship being revoked “and you will be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property,” it said. A registration fee of $50 would be required, it said.

Immediately after the reports were made regarding the leaflets, Secretary of State John Kerry latched on to the issue in order to drum up propaganda against the pro-Russian separatists and implicitly conjure images of Nazi Germany to be associated with Russia, only months after Kerry played the Hitler card against Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government.

Kerry stated, “In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable — it’s grotesque. And any of the people who engage in these kinds of activities — from whatever party or whatever ideology or whatever place they crawl out of — there is no place for that.”

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, also seized on the reports, calling them “the real deal.”
Zionist organizations have, of course, seized on the leaflets as well for their own purposes.

However, the “chairman of Donetsk’s temporary government,” Denis Pushilin, the individual whose name appears on the leaflets in question, denies that he had anything to do with them.

If the leaflets are real then such affronts against Jewish people are not only reprehensible but they should be condemned and responded to.

Fortunately, evidence now shows that the leaflets were entirely concocted by some other party and are, indeed, fake.

Backing up the reports showing that the leaflets were fake, Lesley Weiss, Deputy Director of the National Conference Supporting Jews told the Daily Dot, “It’s a fake flyer. It’s not true that they have to register or be deported.”

That the flyers were likely fake was not a difficult deduction to make even early on. First, the claims suggesting that Jews were being targeted because of their support for the Kiev “Bendery junta,” a reference to Stephan Bandera is bizarre to say the least since Bandera is known for his pogroms against Jews throughout Ukraine during the Second World War.

Although the source of the leaflets is unknown at the moment, it is most likely that they were simply created for the sole purpose of trashing the reputation of the pro-Russian separatists and creating even further division inside Ukraine. While Kerry’s immediate grasping at straws immediately after reports of the leaflets came to light could suggest that the leaflets were yet another propaganda effort by the State Department/CIA network designed to capitalize on a media and country obsessed with political correctness and conditioned to believe that any all of “America’s enemies” are the “next Hitler, it is also possible that the leaflets were the brainchild of the regime in Kiev.

In the end, this latest propaganda effort is only surprising in the fact that it is largely incoherent in terms of the overall narrative that it attempts to promote.

We can only wait and see what propaganda the geopolitical battle between Russia and NATO has left in store for the masses in the coming days.